Real Clear Politics - NO FOOLING TODAY: Yesterday's acts of savagery in Iraq leave me in no mood for jokes this morning. Peggy Noonan gets it right on Opinionjournal.com - except she's not nearly Old Testament enough about it. The people responsible for yesterday's atrocities need to suffer, and suffer publicly.
A small, dark part of me wants us to respond with such raw ferocity so as to leave the Baathists and bin Ladenites stunned. It's not politically correct but I'll admit it: part of me wants to see those responsible stuffed with bacon and put before a firing squad; wants to see innocents of Fallujah sent packing; wants to see that hornet's nest of evil turned into the world's biggest asphalt parking lot.
It's not going to happen, of course, nor should it. Because unlike the inhumanity on display yesterday, that's not how we operate. It's the defining difference between us and them.
We have the power to raze towns, to destroy millions of people with the push of a single button, yet we don't. Our responsibility to civilization and to mankind prevents us from even considering the possibility.
There isn't any question, however, what Islamofascists would do if they possessed even a fraction of the power we have today. The Vatican would be a smoldering pile of rubble and Manhattan would be uninhabitable for the next 200 years.
Our respect for life and our obligation as a Superpower puts us at an operational disadvantage against the enemy. But it shouldn't prevent us from responding with a show of force and justice that will send a clear message to those in Fallujah and elsewhere that such actions simply will not be tolerated.
The sooner we force the thugs and assassins in Iraq to understand that we're not playing around and we're not going away, the more lives that will be saved in the long run.
THE O'FRANKEN FACTOR: I listened to most of The O'Franken Factor yesterday. Obviously, I'm not the target audience so it's a bit tough for me to say whether his show (as well as the entire network) is going to have any staying power. From what I heard yesterday, however, I'd have to say it doesn't look too promising.
There's no question Franken is a smart, funny guy. But my initial reaction is that the format of the show just stinks. Co-host Katherine Lanpher, formerly of Minnesota Public Radio, serves more or less as Franken's foil for the full three hours. She takes the show to and from break, introduces guests and news items and then passes them off to Franken to freelance.
For those who listen to Howard Stern, it's like the last half hour his show when he does the news with Robin, except Franken's gig is six times longer and about fifty times less entertaining.
The highlight of the show (or low light, depending on your perspective) was the interview with Bob Kerrey. Kerrey was quite critical of the Bush administration on a number of things (especially their handling of the 9/11 Commission itself) but he refused to take the bait when Lanpher and Franken went off into loony land and started asking questions about whether Bush knew any of the bin Laden family members and/or was personally involved in arranging their flight out of the country on September 11 and implying that the joint testimony of Bush & Cheney was designed to shield President Bush because he's a moron (MoDo was obviously tuning in).
As you might expect, Michael Moore was much more responsive to these same type of questions when Franken & Lanpher interviewed him during the last hour of the show.
Another problem with the O'Franken Factor is that it just didn't seem to cover much ground at all. Unlike Rush Limbaugh, who flits from subject to subject using news reports from all around the country as segues, Franken and Lanpher spent almost the entire three hours droning on about the 9/11 Commission and what liars Bush and his people are. Franken cited a number of old news articles to support his arguments, but I don't think he informed his listeners of a single thing they probably already didn't know or hadn't already heard.
All in all, the O'Franken Factor strives to be funny and informative, but instead of blending those two characteristics into a quality form of satire (like the Daily Show, for example), the show seems completely disjointed by them. The result is three hours of jabber that isn't very informative and not very funny. |
